Researchers prepare reagents for the DNA sequencing of patient samples on the Baylor College of Medicine's campus in Houston. In a study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists say they were able to crack a quarter of mystery diseases that had stumped doctors for years by decoding the patients' genes.

Gene scans solve mystery diseases

Marilynn Marchione / The Associated Press /

Published Oct 4, 2013 at 05:00AM / Updated Nov 19, 2013 at 12:31AM

They were mystery diseases that had stumped doctors for years — adults with strange symptoms and children with neurological problems, mental slowness or muscles too weak to let them stand. Now scientists say they were able to crack a quarter of these cases by decoding the patients’ genes.

Their study is the first large-scale effort to move gene sequencing out of the lab and into ordinary medical care, and it shows that high hopes for this technology are finally paying off.

“This is a direct benefit of the Human Genome Project,” the big effort to decode our DNA, said Dr. Christine Eng of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “We’re now able to directly benefit patients through more accurate diagnosis.”

She led the study, which was published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine. It gives results on the first 250 patients referred to Baylor for a newer type of sequencing — just the DNA segments that hold the recipes for all the proteins the body needs. That’s only about 1 percent of the whole genome.

Baylor has sequenced more patients beyond those in the study — 1,700 so far — and found gene flaws in 1 out of 4, Eng said.

That rate will improve as more genes are linked to diseases, but it’s already much higher than the less comprehensive gene tests done now, said Rebecca Nagy, a scientist at Ohio State University and president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors.

“For some of these conditions there could be treatments that are lifesaving,” she said.

Already, three people tested at Baylor were found to have a muscle disorder that can cause respiratory problems and even death. The condition is aggravated by infections and stress, and there are drugs to treat those and prevent serious episodes, Eng said.

In other cases, having a diagnosis helped parents like Lindsey and Brandon Collier decide whether to have more children. The Colliers, who live in Georgetown, Texas, about 30 miles north of Austin, searched for years for an answer to what was plaguing their son, Cannon, now 4.

“He was a pretty floppy baby” with poor muscle tone and problems eating, Lindsey Collier said. “We weren’t getting any answers and they were just all over the map on everything they were testing for.”

“It is a huge weight lifted off our shoulders,” she said of testing at Baylor that found a rare muscle disorder.

Genetic counselors said the problem was not likely to occur in other offspring, so the Colliers had a second child. Their 6-week-old daughter, Smith, is fine, and Cannon is being helped now by intensive physical therapy and other treatments.

Just having a diagnosis is very valuable because it ends the expensive and emotionally exhausting testing that parents go through, said Dr. Robert Green, a geneticist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

“Many of these are children or adults that have had a mystery illness for many years. Their families don’t know what it is and they’re sort of desperate for an answer,” and it’s not possible to find a treatment until you find the cause, he said.

Researchers were able to crack a quarter of cases that had puzzled them for years thanks a large-scale effort to move gene sequencing out of the lab and into ordinary medical care.

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